Why should people who are not behind bars care about women in prison?
Here’s the thing — prisoners are us, members of our society. Yet we’ve done something in this country to think of prisoners as being so deviant, so disgusting, as if their sentence is part of a lifelong punishment with a kind of scarlet letter stigma. Since ex-convicts … have to check that criminal record box on employment forms, since they are not given public housing, these people will fall into an even lower class and will commit more crimes, sometimes more serious crimes. We are guaranteeing a more unstable society. You did all this research on a little-covered area of society, then your book is published in a paperback edition by a small press — is that disappointing? No, on the contrary, this book is a paperback so those in prison and their families and friends can afford it. Affordability was important to me. I was not targeting academic or high-brow readers. I walk around and talk about these issues and want more people to discuss them. What’s the relationship of Powerful V
